Advantages

Disadvantages

The hard work pays off in the long run

I really do try to keep fit. I'm not always very good at it but the intention is always there. I have such a bad habit of buying some fitness equipment sure that I am going to use it all the time but after only using it a couple of times it starts to gather dust at the back of a cupboard. Let's not even begin to mention my expensive gym membership that is currently going to waste.

The York Chinning Bar is something that I bought at a car boot sale for the bargain basement price of only £2. It came fully boxed from a buyer who like me had purchased it on a whim and then never used it. Although I got it dirt cheap they aren't that expensive to buy normally and you can pick one up for just under £10 usually.

I have to say that for even the recommended retail price it is probably worth it but again it will only be worth having if it is actually going to be used. It took me a while to get around to using this as it needs to be assembled and can't be used straight from the box and as I am a bit lazy it took me a few weeks to actually set it up but once I had set it up I did actually find myself using it quite a few times.

This is a pretty basic exercise item with no bells and whistles but although it may be low tech it is pretty effective in building upper body strength. All you get is an adjustable metal bar and some brackets. You need to screw the brackets to the door frame and the metal bar then sits in the brackets and you use the metal bar to lift yourself up to work out your arms and shoulders. Simple.

The attachment of the brackets is easy and only involves screwing in a few screws. Even the poorest of DIY people can manage it. You obviously need to make sure that you measure where the brackets are going to go so that they are at the right height for you when the bar is in them. Obviously as well you need to make sure that your door frame is strong enough to hold your weight as you don't want to be lifting yourself up and your doorframe comes off the wall. In my old flat where I had this up I never had the slightest problem with the brackets ripping out bits of wood and my doorframe stayed securely fitted to the wall.

As I mentioned this chinning bar is an amazing way to improve your upper body strength. As you are pulling your entire weight up through your arm and shoulder muscles you are getting a fantastic workout. Be warned however that this isn't the exercise for beginners and people with really low upper body strength as it is really hard work and dragging your whole body up and down is not that easy. If you have low upper body strength then start with something lighter and work your way up to using this.

As well as using this as a chinning bar you can also attach it on the bottom on the doorway and use it for helping with situps. You would just need to put your feet through it and use it to help support your weight while doing sit ups. Although I haven't used it in this way I have used similar things in the past and it does make doing several sit ups much easier to accomplish as it just gives you that little bit extra support while doing them.

I haven't actually used this in a while as I moved out of my flat in to a house and I just haven't gotten around to reaffixing it but I will one day. When I removed it from the doorway in my flat I was surprised to see how little damage it had caused and all that was left was the screw holes.

I would definitely recommend this chinning bar to people looking for something that is going to help improve their upper body strength. It is really effective and also because it is so cheap it doesn't matter if you don't use it all the time as you will still get your money's worth out of it. Of course the more you use it the better the benefit you will get out of it.

It is also a fantastic thing for people who live in flats or who just haven't got a lot of space for exercise equipment as it is just so unobtrusive and easy to store. Once the brackets are up you can remove the bar whenever you want and because it is just a metal bar it can easily be stored out of the way. I used to just keep it under the couch as there it was out the way and easy to get to whenever I wanted to use it. You don't need to buy it and worry that you are always going to have a bar sitting in the middle of your doorway for your to try and manoeuvre around as it really is easy to put on and off whenever you want.

The York Chinning Bar is easily available both online and in sports shops and you should be able to pick it up for less than £10. The usual price seems to be around about £9.99 but if you are willing to look around you can pick them up for less. For this amount of money I personally think it is well worth it and would give it 5 stars out of 5.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

A Great Overall Product

A Great value product and i have had no problems so far in the 8 months ive been using it.I have mine mounted on my bedroom door frame. The bar expands to squeeze the rubber pads on either side so it doesnt slip whilst your using it the door sills take most of the weight. I permanantaly leave it in my door frame ( you can hang clothes on it if you havent got any room left ! ) The mounting brackets and screws long solid and fine.The weight issue seems a little one as im pretty heavy and it doesnt even move slighlty when i hang of it and it feels like it could take a lot more than my weight.

Their are many Excercises you can do on this bar and i recommend finding a plan online to fit your specific needs. A complete bargain at £12 and its well worth the money you pay. The item arrived quickly and was well packaged.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

Great for workouts, would recommend to anyone looking to work out with limited space

I bought the york chin up bar a couple of months ago and its been very effective for workouts. This product is available for around £10 if you have a good look around which I think is great value for money as it works out your forearms and bicep a lot aswell as your triceps. But this isnt the only reason I love it, the small stick is so compact as it can extend to fit any doorways thats the reason I love it! The product is made by york so you know its a brand you can trust. Its also durable to heavy weights as its made out of a heavy metal(it can manage to hold upto 100 kg). Its easy to use and to store not to mention that you will be ripped after just a couple of months of use, what more could you ask for? Thanks for reading this review, hope it helps.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

All round great quality and value for money!

This product is a sturdy metal chinup/pull up bar which can fit between doors. Once fixed to two brackets, positioned either side of the door frame, you spin the bar round to adjust the length of the bar so it is suitable with your door frame. The product is great for chin-ups, pull-ups and the lower door attachments can be used so you can do sit-ups, crunches, leg raises to name a few. I bought mine from Argos a number of years ago, all for the bargain price of £10.

AppearanceThe product is a long, shiny, smooth cylindrical bar made from a sturdy metal steel construction. The product is essential two bars fitted into one long cylinder, in that the inner part can spin against the outer part and this adjusts the length of the bar. The length of the product can go from around 25 to 41 inches. The bar weighs around 2kg and feels very sturdy although it is hollow in places. There are two silver metal brackets that need to be fixed with three screws in each, to either side of the top of your door frame. At the end of the chinup bar itself, is a rubbery foam component which softens the force exerted onto the brackets themselves and allows a tight secure fit, making the product stable once up and your using it. Also included, are two small red plastic door attachments that can be attached to the bottom of the door frame. This allows you to rest your feat against them when you do sit ups and crunches and I've also held it with my hands, laid on the floor and managed to do leg raises too.

DurabilityThe product is very, very durable in all of the years I've had it. The screws have held really tight and the bar itself has not dented or bent under the weight of me. I am probably above the average man in terms of bodyweight and height but the bar does not so much as move when I'm hanging from it doing chin-ups. The product only weighs 2kg and is hollow at either end, but the steel construction is second to none and is of a very high and safe construction. I would rate this product, as long as you put the screws in correctly and deep to at least 19-20 stones+ but this is again only my opinion. I could honestly see this bar lasting a life time, I have no fear the bar will fail when I'm using it, it's simply that well made.

Ease of AssemblyThe bar is easy to assemble, it literally took me 5 or 10 minutes with a screwdriver to attach the wall sockets to my door frame at the top, and the red plastic attachments to the bottom and the product was ready to use. The screws were provided along with the bar and bracket/sockets but I think it's best to have a few in, just in case you're missing one, and a decent screwdriver would be handy too. The difficulty of assembly I would therefore rate as complete beginner and can be assembled really quickly, you will have 3 small screw marks on each side of your door frame but they can be easily filled in should you need to move the bar to a new doorframe.

PricingThe bar is incredible value for money, I bought it for around £10 from Argos years ago. Currently on Amazon it is around £10 delivered as well, which is fantastic. The bar is extremely high quality, easy to assemble, great for chin-ups and pull-ups and is adjustable to suit most standard door frames. I consider this product an essential piece of equipment, and fantastic value for money.

DisadvantagesThey are few and far between with this product, the only improvement I could suggest would that maybe York could have fitted rubber grips or knurled regions to the bar so that it is easier to hold onto. The bar itself is very smooth and slippery itself, which I suppose for people with poor grip, unforgiving to hold on to. Rubberised grips or knurled regions could help somewhat but this would be down to the strength of users grip, personally I'm fine holding onto just the bar even if it is very smooth and your grip will build up with consistent use of the product anyway.

OverallTo conclude, this is a fantastic product which is an essential component of my training routine. Chinup/Pullup work are brilliant for improving strength and the bottom attachments allow abdominal work to be completed too. The bar is very sturdy and well made even though it only weighs 2kg. The bar is adjustable to fit most doorframes (25" to 41" it can spin and extend out to)and will only leave 3 small holes as damage either side of your door. The bar will last years and can hold a good amount of weight without failing. For the bargain price of around £10 if you shop around for it, I cannot recommend the York chinning bar enough, a superb product from York fitness.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

Excellent device

From my time in the gym I realised the effectiveness of Chin ups and when I began using home gym equipment I decided that a chin up bar was essential and came across this device. At only a tenner it seemed good value and the feedback for the reviews I had read were all highly positive. This is another to add to that list as I have been very impressed with this device to say the least.

Contained in the pack are two door frame fittings which you easily fit onto the side of the door frame. The chin up bar, which is a very solid piece of kit , sits on top of this fitting and a locking mechanism means that once assembled, and if done correctly (which is fairly easy), the whole device is up, running and assembled straight away!

When attached and you actually start doing the chin ups you will realise how solid the whole device is. It works just right and has good tension and support and you never feel as if it is going to snap or the door is going to give way allowing you to concentrate solely on doing the best exercise possible. And as I said the effects you will feel with this bar are huge! Any home gym equipment simply is not complete without a device similar to this!

All the parts are well made durable and tough, will stand up to any weight and multiple use for the user.One problem I may foresee with these however is the door frame thickness as the brackets do appear to be quite wide. One of my door frames is "just" big enough but my door frames are quite wide so be warned on this front.

Once installed the bar doesn't impact on the functioning of the door and takes only seconds to remove, thats if you really need to remove it as quite frankly mine is one there 24/7.

All in all a quality piece of kit!

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

A Good Way To Tone Your Upper Body

I have never been what I would call a strong person. My job gives me a decent amount of fitness as I work out doors and have to do a bit of lifting and plenty of climbing up and down ladders, but I have never been one of these people who heads down to the gym to do weights. I simply prefer to keep fit and healthy by doing plenty of walking, running and sport. However, a few years back I spotted one of these in my friends house, it seemed like a very simple and easy way to give my arms a decent work out. So I promptly went off and bought myself one. So now it's time to give this a review, the York Doorway Chinning Bar.

So first of all what exactly is this product. Well it's a bar that you put across the top of a doorframe and then do pull ups on. Pretty simple. You can also use it at the bottom of the door frame to use to help you do sit ups although I don't really see this as a very practical use for the bar and I've never used it for this purpose. First of all then how do you attach it to the frame? It's pretty simple, there are two little brackets that you screw into the door frame in the desired position, then you simply twist the bar to make it longer or shorter, get the bar in the right place the twist it so it gets longer and then rest on the two little brackets. Make sure the bar is tight and fixed firmly in place, then there you have it, your very own chinning bar.

I was quite excited about the prospect of my own mini gym on my bedroom door. The first test of this bar is will it hold my weight. It did, the bar seems very strong and I imagine even someone twice my weight would not have a problem putting their weight on this. The only issue would be if the wood in the doorway was of poor quality or if you hadn't put the brackets on correctly. This was not an issue with my bar though and so it was all set for use.

There isn't really a whole lot else I can tell you about this bar. It is smooth and easy enough to grip although if your hand get sweaty it can be a little slippery. I have noticed that over the years it does seemed to have rusted ever so slightly but certainly not do an alarming degree. The bar therefore is pretty durable, I must admit that after some good early use I soon got out of the habit of using it and my exercise regime fell by the way side, but that of course is no fault of the bar itself.

The York Doorway Chinning Bar is quite good value, you can pick up one of these for around £12 online which is certainly not to expensive. As I mentioned this bar should last years without giving you any problems so for what you pay for it the bar should really last you well. Obviously how you use the bar is down to you, I will say that for a while there it did certainly improve my strength, if you use the bar in the way it is meant to be used and on a regular basis it should really tone your upper body and give you some decent arm strength. So overall I would have to say this is a pretty good product.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

A decent bit of kit for a very intense workout

I had a york chinning bar many years ago, in fact it must have been about 8-9 years ago now that I come to think of it!

At the time I was living with my mum and dad, and me and my brother were both very much into our keep fit equipment, and as such we decided to buy a chinning bar to help develop the strength in our arms and chest.

We actually purchased our chinning bar from Argos, but I can not possibly remember what we paid for it. It is however, now available on Amazon for a price of just £10 which I think is a real bargain.

Included with the chin - up bar are 2 brackets which need screwing into the sides of a door frame. Once this is done the bar itself can be placed over the brackets, and by turning the body of the bar it will expand itself out onto the bracket and give an extremely strong fixing.

One important point to consider is the depth of your door frames though! My mum and dad had nice flat deep door frames, and so the brackets for the chinning bar fitted into their frames easily. However when I moved out of their house about 5 years ago, I took the bar with me, but found that the door frames in my house were not deep enough to accommodate the brackets, and so it is back in the door frame of my old bedroom at my mum and dads house.

The workout generated from this simple bit of kit is very intense. A pull up of the whole body weight is very difficult to do, and even at my best, I could only just about manage 10 repetitions before my arms would be trembling, and I had to give in. This works the arms very well, and there are a whole host of different exercises that you can do with it, such as not really working the arms, but just simply holding onto the bar, and raising you legs and knees into the air, which works the abs very effectively. Or for an advanced workout, you can grip some form of added weight between your legs while attempting a pull-up!

Overall this is a great bit of equipment which comes at a very low price, and takes up very little room. It is simple to install, assuming your door frame is suitable, and does not obstruct the opening or closing of the door in any way. I had my bar positioned about 4 inches from the top of the door frame, so again it does not restrict entrance through the door, unless you are a very tall person, in which case you may need to duck slightly as you pass under the door. If it does need removing,it takes about 10 seconds to unscrew the bar from the bracket, and a similar amount of time to re-fit it again afterwards.

It is a very good piece of equipment, but it is a hard exercise to perform, as it is so demanding on the arms and chest, but if you have the determination to stick with it, it will produce very good results.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

Fix the screws and you've got a near perfect pull up bar

I've written a few exercise related reviews on here but I have to say that my pullup bar is one of my favorites! I picked this York chinning bar up at my local sports shop for £20 about 6 months ago. I kicked myself a bit when I came home and realised it was available from Amazon for about a tenner! For twenty pounds though, seeing the amount of use I've gotten out of it over the last six months, it was a bargain.

The bar itself comes in a fairly non-descript box with a photo of an unbelievably muscular man on the front promising you his body for a few chinups and pullups every morning. The set itself consists of the bar and two circular mounting brackets. The brackets are screwed into your doorframe and the bar extends to fill the gap. York provide their own screws but believe me, they are terrible. I substituted some of my own wood screws and it felt a lot more secure. It probably isn't essential but I reckon substituting the screws is good for piece of mind! After that the bar is set and it's ready for use.

Using the bar is so simple it doesn't really need an explanation. Put hands on bar. Pull self up. Repeat.

The bar itself is made of polished steel, I'm not sure if it's stainless but there's no rust on mine yet. Not that I thought much rust would accumulate in my kitchen! The polished steel can be a bit slippery on sweaty palms and the diameter of the bar doesn't help this. Obviously in order to increase strength York went with a thicker bar, unfortunately this is a bit thick for some smaller hands. I handle it fine but my girlfriend struggles a bit with her grip. This could be purely a strength issue however so don't buy that much into it.

So far the bar has been incredibly reliable and useful and I've yet to have a single problem with it. As an aside it's useful if you're ironing in the kitchen and need to hand shirts somewhere! The diameter of the bar is just about perfect for hangers! Overall it's fantastic and for the money it costs you're getting a cracking deal on a great piece of exercise equipment! Just remember the good screws!

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

A nice chin up bar, that was customised for me!

When I lived at home (many, many moons ago!) my younger brother developed a real passion for exercise (which has since left him completely, on the advent of his now wife being a barmaid!).

This being the case his bedroom was filled to the brim with exercise equipment with this particular chining bar being one of them!

One of the exercises needed for men's particular muscle groups is either a push up or pull up, this targets the arms and chest, which muscle men take pride in bulking up, so this chining bar was of course sold as an aid to doing the pull up part of the exercise, and seemed especially perfect as a device for someone who wants to tone up, but who doesn't necessarily have much room to manoeuvre with!

The idea of this piece of equipment is very much being the space saving end, with it being purchased in it's shortest length (which can then be adjusted when actually placing in the brackets before use, and the brackets themselves which then get screwed into the doorframe for added strength (I am sure that in the first instance they may well have come with sticky pads too, but were obviously not that effective!).

Once you have measured the optimum height for you, the got your long suffering Dad to fix for you (my Dad is fantastic!), you are good to go!

These are incredibly hard to start doing, with me even holding my bro up when he first started, but soon found he could jump up and do a few pull ups without to much difficulty after a while!

Myself always struggled lifting my considerable bulk off the ground with my spindly chicken arms, and so taking pity on me my Dad then fashioned two more brackets for the bar, which meant that I could transform the bar from chin up to chin down, transforming it into a sit up bar, though again this would depend on getting two more brackets and the space you have around that particular doorway.

This is a strong and long lasting bar, with it still being in the doorway at my Mum and Dad's house, even though we have both been left home for years now, it doesn't obstruct the doorway in terms of closing the door, and as my Mum is really the only person who goes in the spare room now, she is too short to be catching her head on it, so they have just kept it there, a keepsake of when we were kids!

This was a nice enough piece of equipment that adjusted to fit most standard door frame sizes, worked as it should do (as long as you remembered to actually do it!) and was a great space saver, the fact that this is being sold at pocket money prices is the icing on the cake, recommended!